


If you go my way

by Anuna



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ward's self esteem is really low, and Skye is dealing with the hurt and anger and compassion, and Ward is helping out, and his feeling of self worth is low as well, mild references to past abuse, redemption story arc, team is taking down hydra cells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 20:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1578017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anuna/pseuds/Anuna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two months into Ward's redemption path he gets sick. Skye has never seen him like this - and she realizes, she never had noticed lot of other things which were there, all the time she'd known him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If you go my way

**Author's Note:**

> Oh I know this will get Jossed in just couple of hours but what the heck. It helps me deal with the feels.

“I didn't want to bother you.”

“You should have bothered me!” If Simmons was upset enough to yell at someone in pain, it meant things got very serious. “Ward! How on Earth did you stand that kind of pain for five hours?”

Skye thought she'd clap him upside the head if his face wasn't already ashen and every single muscle in his neck looked strained. 

“What's wrong with him?” Coulson asked, trying for professional tone, but his own worry was slipping under it. Nobody was over certain recent events yet – Skye didn't even like to think about them, and that was difficult because Ward was a living, breathing reminder – but right now, everyone was hovering around the gurney on which he was still trying to sit. 

“Give me a moment, Sir,” Simmons sighed and pushed against Ward's shoulder, to convince him to lie back down. Skye took a step closer when Simmons lifted his shirt and revealed his abdomen. Ward was squirming. Actually squirming in pain, with an unfocused look in his eyes. “Show me where it hurts.”

He closed his eyes. His hair was wet, he was sweating that hard. This totally wasn't good. Skye realized she was holding her breath. 

“I don't know,” Ward said, breathing hard and ragged, like someone suffering really intense pain. Skye had seen him beaten up, shot, cut, but she had never seen him like this. “Everywhere.”

“Ward,” Simmons said rather softly. He pressed his lips together, drew his knees up and placed a hand low on his abdomen. “Both sides?” Simmons asked. He nodded. “And your back?”

“That too.”

“On one to ten, how strong is -”

“Nine,” he said. Skye had a feeling it was a lot closer to ten than he was willing to admit. It was telling that he ranked the pain as 'nine' as well. She shared a look with May whose face was grim enough to read, and she was concerned as well. 

Ward was far from being forgiven, but here they were, all of them worried about him. Someone could betray you, and yet you still couldn't just switch off everything you shared. Or felt. 

“Have you been to bathroom?” Simmons asked. Ward shot her a painful look. Simmons put a calming hand on his shoulder and looked up at Coulson – despite no more SHIELD or ranks, some things didn't change. 

“Well?” Coulson asked. 

“I still need to perform a scan, which I am not certain how I'll do, but at this point I'm rather positive he has kidney stones.”

“Kidney stones?” Ward asked, panting. 

“Nutrition habits and not drinking enough water are most common causes. Also, men tend to get them more often and earlier in life than women,” Simmons said. 

“What? Bad guys don't pay attention to hydration?” Skye asked before she could think better and felt how everyone stared. It was a moment where everyone would laugh. _Before_. She wanted to mentally punch herself. 

Coulson frowned and swallowed. “Treatment?” Skye realized how much she tensed – they had limited supplies and virtually no backup. They didn't have SHIELD medical facilities any more. Couldn't just fly off and hand someone into proper medical care. 

“Water,” Simmons said, “and walking.”

“Walking?” Ward wheezed. Simmons nodded.

“The stones need to move down your urinary tract, that's why you need to move. I can give you painkillers and something to prevent an infection, however those won't help your current condition. You have to, um -” Simmons paused. 

“Pee the things out?” Skye said before she was able to stop herself. Simmons made a face. 

“Exactly.” 

Ward closed his eyes, twitched and groaned. “You've got to be kidding me.”

 

*

Skye paused in front of the door and took a look through the thick glass. There was something decidedly not right in the way Ward moved around. Like an old man dressed in pajamas. Injured, hunched old man, dragging the IV stall with him. 

Skye twitched, fighting the urge to walk over to him and comfort him somehow. Keeping him in the doghouse was much easier when he was feeling okay. The thing was she never had to watch him sick. It was different than being injured in action – and coming to think of it, he was never seriously injured. Illness was different thing all together. It was debilitating, taking away control, power, dignity. She hadn't been ill like this, but she was shot. This thing itching right under her skin was compassion, but could you be compassionate and angry of someone at the same time? 

Skye sighed, pushed the door and entered their lab – infirmary basement. Ward tried to turn around from where he was standing, holding onto the metal stall. Skye winced. 

“It's me,” she said. 

He didn't say anything. He just nodded. Or at least she thought he did. 

Skye waited. It's been two months – not that she was counting – and he was doing all the work. He gave them intel, he helped them enter Hydra secure bases, he performed above and beyond the call of duty and didn't ask for anything. Not acceptance or forgiveness, or even care, and that was a deeply troubling, worrying thought. Skye imagined him like an epitome of evil after she found out, someone cold and faceless, someone she couldn't ever sympathize for (even though that particular tendency flew out of the proverbial window the second Deathlock, Mike, shot him in the chest). But he was none of what she had been imagining. He would sit in the corner after missions, like a dog nobody needed. She couldn't hate him, and that bugged her; she didn't want to trust him, or think of him as someone... close, and yet every time she looked at him something inside of her stopped. 

_I don't believe people are born evil_. That kept coming back to haunt her. 

What was evil anyway? Hydra? It was a secret organization with very dubious morals. SHIELD sometimes wasn't much different. She thought back to her first visit to the Hub. John Garrett? A power greedy sociopath, and the world was full of them. It was nothing she hasn't seen or heard of before, and she needed something like that to explain all that was going on. There was no explanation, though. 

“Ward?” she asked when he braced his hand against the wall. He was leaning forward and panting. The IV was nearly at its end and needed to be replaced. Two months of these guerrilla war conditions taught her lot of things. Without much thought she walked to the counter at the opposite wall where bottles of saline solutions awaited. (She'd been cleaning and dressing wounds too, checking and cleaning weapons, helping Fitz with repairs; she'd been doing everything, just like everyone else. Skye mourned her fingernails. Her hands were ruined.) 

“Thanks,” Ward was speaking through gritted teeth. The worst she'd seen him look was during the Beserker accident, but then his body hadn't been powerless like this. 

“Don't mention it,” Skye said. It just ached in her chest, seeing him like that, but she kept her motions practical, utilitarian, nothing more than necessary, and almost hated herself for it. The moment she was done replacing the old bottle, he started moving, or rather he tried. “Ward,” her reaction was an impulse. She held him so he wouldn't fall, which wasn't easy – he was tall and heavy and at the moment not exactly coordinated. “How long have you been on your feet?”

“Since you guys left,” he said. 

Stubborn idiot. There was affection in that thought. “Are you insane?” 

“Simmons said I should walk,” he said simply. Specialists follow orders. Did he know anything apart from following orders? She wondered if beating sense into his stubborn head would help at all, but somehow she didn't want to beat him any more. 

“I'm sure she didn't mean you should walk until you drop down,”the bed was long four steps away. Skye helped him sit, helped him pull his feet up, thought how aimless he looked. 

That was it. Aimless. He's never been aimless. 

“Ward?” she asked, thinking how she lacked things to say, how the silence between them felt heavy. “Are you in pain?”

“I can manage,” he said, lying down like every bone in his body had been broken. 

“Bullshit. You look like death half warmed over.”

He closed his eyes. “If you say so.”

Old Ward would have retorted something. This Ward? Who was this man? Sometimes she thought she could see the glimpses of the man she knew inside him, and she was more certain that man she wanted to hate didn't even exist. This man made her feel sad. 

“I'll call Simmons,” Skye said. 

Before she left him she briefly squeezed his hand. 

*

She observed his agony through camera, fixed in front of the screen. Nobody tried to distract her from it. Nobody asked why she was still there or if she wanted something or attempted to comfort her. If family was a conglomerate of malfunctioning communication protocols and endless repository of pain, then she definitely had one. 

“Here.”

Skye nearly jumped at the sound of May's voice. May was offering her a cup of tea. Skye took it carefully, searching May's face for reaction. No judgment. There was just something... calm, something way out of Skye's reach.

“Thanks.” 

“How is he?” May asked. 

“Better now,” Skye said, her eyes on Ward's sleeping figure. After hours of pain Simmons was able to give him another shot. He slept now. “Not in pain any more.”

“That's good,” May said. Skye looked at her – May meant it. 

“How are you... not more upset? About his whole -” Skye paused. Even saying it was hard, let alone thinking and reliving the hours after she discovered what he was. 

“He's a spy, Skye. He's been trained by John Garrett probably before he reached adulthood,” May paused and her expression seemed to darken, but it still remained somehow soft. “And he's a man who doesn't let others know he's in pain.” 

The last one stuck out. Skye looked at the other woman. 

“Why?”

“We can guess,” May took a breath, her eyes fixed on Ward on screen. “Sometimes, when it's not important if you're in pain or not... when nobody reacts no matter what you do, you just stop trying.”

“Are you saying -?”

May turned to look at Skye. Her lips tilted up, slightly. 

“You have to ask him.”

*

He woke when she took his hand. She noticed how he flinched – how his shoulders curled and his body tensed until he realized it was her.

“Hey,” she said. “It's alright.” 

He relaxed with an arm over his eyes and less pain in his features. 

Skye leaned against his bed, and he didn't seem to mind. He didn't mind her presence and seemed almost scared to try and initiate more. There were looks that she caught, but when she did he'd look away. And now it looked like he was hiding, for his sake and hers. 

Skye was never the one to hide. And she was never going to be able to hide from him. 

“Ward,” she said quietly, stroking along his arm, so he'd have to move it and look at her. His eyes were still the comforting shade of brown, drawing in the light and reminding her of everything safe. She didn't know how to say what she wanted to tell him, which was unusual for her. The first thing that came to her mind felt so random. “Remember that Wall of Valor?” 

“Yeah,” he whispered back. 

“Why did you take me there?” 

He was looking at the ceiling when he shrugged. “I thought you'd like it. I thought you'd know how to appreciate it.”

“And you didn't?” 

His expression changed so very subtly. “It never meant for me what it meant for you.” 

“What was it... for you?” 

He looked at her then and the aimless feeling about him was back, and the thing was, she never tried to put herself in his shoes, and now when she did, she didn't like what she was feeling.

For her it was home. It was finally a connection to something larger than her, something that meant she wasn't lost or abandoned. For him? If anything, Skye knew how it felt to stand in the room full of people and feel alone. 

“A mission,” he finally said. 

“Was everything a mission?” she asked, even though he answered that question before. But back then she was furious and didn't listen to him, didn't look. Now she saw a man without that one thing that always defined him. He said he was Kevlar. He obeyed orders. He claimed it was nothing personal. Even she called him a robot. 

And it was all supposed to be the truth, but it wasn't. You couldn't keep a man alive if he didn't have any heart, any soul left. And now he didn't know what to do with that soul. _You can't choose to feel._

“You don't know what to do now,” she said, shifting and carefully wrapping her hand around his fingers, his long, warm fingers that she liked so much and longed for and tried to hate but couldn't. “No more missions, except those you pick on your own.” 

“I don't know how to do that,” he said. 

“Nobody does,” she said. “Me or AC or anyone. Everything is.... gone.”

“I brought it down,” he said. 

That was another thing, she thought. He always took the blame. If John Garret trained him since his teenage years.... Skye didn't want to finish that thought. It simply filled her with dread. Ward always assumed he wasn't worthy of something good. It was like remembering things that were right there and she simply failed to see them properly the first time around. 

“I don't think you can take all of the credit, you know,” she said, and her tone came out lighter than she expected. She sighed. “Ward. You did shitty things.”

He closed his eyes. “I know.” 

“And I want to believe that you can do good things too. That the guy who trained me, who helped me become who I am now isn't just one big lie. And I'm afraid of believing that.” 

She said that facing forward, but when she did, his hand landed softly on her hip. The touch felt warmer, better than she wanted it to be, but there were things she didn't get to choose. You can't choose to feel. Or not to feel. 

“Skye,” he said and she looked at him again. He looked so familiar, a part of her own history she would never be able to erase, and that was why she couldn't hate him. He was a part of her. Hating him was hating herself. 

What he said next was so simple, almost childish. Heartbreaking. 

“I want to be that man,” he said. 

He lifted his hand and offered it. Skye waited a heartbeat. His palm was soft, soft like the home she never truly had. Hydra was SHIELD and SHIELD was Hydra. And now there was nothing except the world they decided to build by themselves. 

Skye took a deep breath and focused on her anger, let go a fraction of it and held his hand a bit tighter in her own. 

“I believe you,” she said.


End file.
